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Internal Market Scoreboard: Little improvement for the EFTA States

Iceland and Norway continue to have the highest transposition deficit of all 31 EEA States, according to the Internal Market Scoreboard published by the EFTA Surveillance Authority today.

“Once again we must call upon Iceland and Norway to do their utmost to get out of this unfortunate situation. There is no level playing field and no real internal market without effective implementation of and compliance with common rules. Therefore, the Authority has stepped up its efforts to ensure that the States honor their obligations under the EEA Agreement”, Ms. Oda Helen Sletnes, president of the Authority, said.

The Scoreboard, published bi-annually, monitorshow Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway comply with their transposition obligations under the EEA Agreement.The transposition deficit indicates how many directives containing internal market rules and principles the EEA States have failed to communicate as having been transposed into national legislation within the foreseen deadline.

Iceland's deficit at 3.1%, down from 3.2% in the last scoreboard, is still the highest amongst all the 28 EU Member States and the three EFTA States. It correspondsto 34 directives not being fully transposed into national law within the foreseen deadlines. Norway's deficit increased slightly since the last scoreboard from 1.8% to 1.9%. This is the second highest deficit in the whole EEA and corresponds to 21 overdue directives.

Liechtenstein reduced its deficit from 1% to 0.7% and is the only EFTA State below the target of a maximum 1% transposition deficit and on par with the EU average. Liechtenstein has 8 directives that are overdue for implementation.

The average transposition deficit of the three EFTA States is 1.9%, a slight decrease from 2.0% in the previous scoreboard.In comparison, the average deficit of the EU Member States is 0.7%. Only five EU Member States are above the target of 1%, and none of them reached more than a 1.5% deficit.

The Authority is currently pursuing 177 cases where the EFTA States have failed to transpose directives and regulations on time. A large number of cases have also been referred or are about to being referred to the EFTA Court for failure to implement EEA acts.